Monday April 30, 2007 could have just been a regular Monday, but Bob was planning to ride his bike to work that day.  Bob told me his plans the day before and suggested if I was looking for a reason to go for a ride I could ride to his place of business and the we could ride back home together.  I thought this was a good idea because I haven’t ridden my bike much over the past few weeks and it was time to start getting back into longer distance riding shape.  This would be a good excuse to get out on a week night for a good ride of reasonable distance. 

Plan was to meet at Bob’s office around 7:00 pm, so I figured I would have to leave my house at 5:45 pm to get there on time.  I left work on time and got home and changed quickly and ate a quick dinner to give me the energy necessary for this type ride.  The weather was warm and sunny when I started out.  The weather forecast was for possible rain later in the evening.  No sign of rain or even rain clouds as I rode down my street with Bob’s office as my destination.   

I’m not used to riding this time of day during the week.  Most of my riding is on the weekends or just around the neighbor hood during the week.  There was quite a bit of rush hour traffic everywhere I went on the way to meet Bob.  I ride on bike paths or side streets, so the rush hour traffic really wasn’t a problem.  It was a bit noisier than what I am used to due to the increase volume of cars on the main roads. 

I left pretty much right on time and figured I had enough time to take a bit longer route than necessary.  I rode through my sub to Tienken and then west to Squirrel.  I like taking Squirrel south because it has nice bike paths all the way and the nice bridge for crossing the I-59 freeway is very bike friendly.  I stayed on Squirrel to Auburn and went east a short distance to Adams.  South on Adams to South Blvd where I went east again all the way to Rochester Road where Bob’s office is located.  This route ended up being about two miles longer than if I had gone more direct and not started out west to take Squirrel.  Due to the extra distance I was running a little late so I pushed my speed to try and catch up.  This tired me out and didn’t give me time to rest like I was planning if I had gotten there a couple minutes before Bob was ready. 

Bob called me on my cell phone just as I was pulling into his parking lot.  Bob was already sitting on his bike ready to go when I pulled up.  I paused for a couple minutes to get a drink of water before we started for home.   

Clouds were starting to roll in and it looked like rain was in the near future.  I told Bob the route I had taken to get there and we both agreed to take the more direct route home in an effort to try and beat the rain.   

We headed over to Rochester Road and went north.  We stayed on Rochester Road for quite a ways before we cut over on Avon and took Livernois north for a ways.  The rain clouds were coming in from the west and we kept adjusting our route to avoid going west any sooner than we needed.  We were going to take Walton all the way to Adams, but due to the clouds and rain we ended up taking the side street route behind the Greek Island all the way to Tienken.  We were right on the edge of the rain.  It was definitely raining hard just to the south west of us.  We got sprinkled on, but never really got any heavy rain on us during our ride home.   

Bob had a lot more energy than me during this ride home.  I just didn’t get enough time to rest before turning around and heading home.  It ended up being a good ride and a good workout for me.  My legs were tired when I got home, but I was certainly glad I did this Monday evening ride.  

I ended up riding a total of 21.4 miles total, 11.7 of those miles on the way there and 9.7 miles on the way home.  The max speed was 21.5 mph, average speed 10.6 mph and 2 hours of actual ride time.
David Lindquist